Previews

Preview: Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Branches Out

Treyarch forces the Internet to pause before passing judgement on the next CoD.

Ok, I'll admit it: I'm impressed. I didn't expect to be, but Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 appears to be a legitimate attempt to break the annual mega-shooter out of its repetitive rut. That's not to say it's not still a game about shooting everything that moves in a series of over-the-top scenarios involving excessive explosions, occasional slow motion, and swatting enemies like flies as you go. But Black Ops 2 represents the biggest change of pace since the switch to the Modern Warfare era -- and not just in its near-future setting. Treyarch is taking one of the most notoriously linear games out there and adding branching storylines and sandbox-style "Strike Force" missions with a bit of real-time strategy gameplay mixed in. I did not see that coming.

Modern-er Warfare

The scenes of destruction, viewed from the ground as the US president's military escort in LA, are intense.

After an introductory video featuring retired Lt. Colonel General Oliver North and author P.W. Singer explaining how near-future warfare is going to be incredibly, pants-crappingly terrifying, the plot of Black Ops 2 was revealed: in the year 2025, an international jerk named Raul Menendez somehow manages to seize control of the United States' fleet of advanced unmanned combat drones and turns them against Los Angeles, New York, Washington DC, and several other major cities. Meanwhile, other drones are dispatched to provoke a war with China. The scenes of destruction, viewed from the ground as the US president's military escort in LA, are intense: robot planes darken the sky and rain down fire, strafing and bombing and ramming everything in sight. Watching hijacked US aircraft ram skyscrapers, one of which crumbles and falls (and, in an unexpected twist for a CoD game, does not kill the player character) is a somewhat ballsy parallel to September 11, 2001.

No, this isn't a screenshot from Syndicate.

While combat remains very whack-a-mole, whacking airborne moles is new, as is shooting things that aren't human. Of course, there are ground troops as well -- apparently mercenaries working for Menendez -- and the futuristic rifle the player character (identified as the son of Black Ops' hero Alex Mason) uses to defend the President's escape, appears to almost completely negate their ability to take cover, with a downright unsporting combination of X-ray vision and material-penetrating rounds. (We're left to imagine the implications of such a gun in multiplayer.) But then the bear-sized land drones with machine guns bolted to their backs show up, and that makes things a little tougher; they require a little sharpshooting at their legs, unless you happen to have an RPG handy.

Off the Rails?

A little later we see Mason Jr. using a wrist-mounted computer to direct quad-copter drones of his own to take out targets, and get behind the controls of a futuristic VTOL jet to take down drones in the sky. The kicker? Treyarch says this jet isn't just an on-rails shooter, but a fully pilotable vehicle that we'll be able to control ourselves. I have to question just how much freedom we'll have -- in the demo the player closely followed his drone targets as he and his AI wingmen turned them into spectacular fireballs -- but any control will be welcome.

Los Angeles has seen better times.

So then we're shown the really surprising thing: the Strike Force missions. For the first time in a CoD game, the player controls an entire squad of troops and drones, and can freely switch to an overhead view called Overwatch. From there, you'll be able to give orders for your squad to move and take objectives or assume direct control of any soldier or drone. Treyarch's promising that these scenarios, which are a part of the campaign, will be repeatable, and success or failure in them will have an impact on the storyline.

PC Quality?

Treyarch is billing this as "PC-quality graphics on the console."

In a post-demo presentation, there's a rundown of the graphical upgrade that Treyarch is billing as "PC-quality graphics on the console." I chuckled a little at the notion, though what they've pulled off here is looking pretty impressive considering the 1280x720 resolution limit. I mean it as a compliment when I say that the lighting and bump mapping technology appears to have finally caught up to Half-Life 2 in a lot of ways, creating shadows and textures I'm looking forward to seeing in high resolution, and there's some extremely well-done character animation accomplished by using full-body and facial motion capture techniques.

Continue to page 2 of our massive preview where we chat with Treyarch Studio Head Mark Lamia about what we can expect to see in Black Ops 2 on PC.